August 10, 2011

The Memory in Our Tablets

In reviewing this week's Torah reading, a competent editor might have asked Moses what he really needs it all for. Much of the speechifying, the recounting of what has already been counted, seems excessive in a book so concise in its delivery of stories and laws. Do we really need to hear the Ten Commandments a second time?

True, there are some juicy novellae this week for the philosophically inclined: God's unity, in what would become the famous Shema prayer; reward and punishment; the perfection of the Torah; and more all make their appearance.

But the core of the reading is in the repetition of the Ten Commandments. Scholars and commentators have always scoured this week's version of the Decalogue for all the minor textual variations from the one appearing in Exodus 20, in the reading known as Yitro. The ninth commandment, we discover, talks about the "vain" witness rather than the false witness; the tenth commandment's prohibition on coveting presents a slightly different list of things not to be coveted; and the fourth commandment offers a new rationale for keeping the Sabbath, recalling the exodus from Egypt rather than the creation of the universe.

However, the most important difference is not in the text, but in the context. The first time the Ten Commandments appears, it is in the story of the revelation at Sinai. This time, it's in Moses'retelling of that story. And there's the rub.

This is, after all, the Torah, in which nothing is supposed to be extraneous. So we have to conclude that according to the Bible, the retelling of a story is no less important than the original event itself. As if to prove the point, Moses prefaces this week's recitation of the Ten Commandments with the following:

Only take heed to yourself, and keep your soul diligently, lest you forget the things which your eyes have seen, and lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life. But teach them to your sons, and your sons' sons—the day that you stood before the Lord your God at Horeb . . .

As if that's not enough, just before the Ten Commandments themselves, he adds this:

The Lord made not this covenant with our fathers, but with us, even us, who are all of us here alive this day. The Lord talked with you face to face in the mountain out of the midst of the fire . . .

This is remarkable, because most of the hundreds of thousands who stood listening to Moses' speech hadn't actually been at Sinai. Clearly there is something more profound at work. In a crucial sense, this is the beginning of Judaism.

On some level, Judaism is not about the events of Mount Sinai, but their recollection and eternal rediscovery through texts and memorial ritual, creating a living community of remembrance. It is not the encounter with the One God so much as the teaching about that encounter to subsequent generations. It is not hearing God in the fire, wondering whether one will survive it, as much as the retelling of the story of the fire. For what happened in Yitro happened once, while what happens in Va'ethanan happens every day of our lives.

Today, the most popular claims against Judaism are about the "unlikelihood" of the "hypothesis" of a single, caring God who intervenes in history. Under the influence of Christianity, which from its origins was much more about beliefs, argumentation and proof, a great many writers and thinkers put Judaism to an intellectual test. Where Judaism is found wanting, it is on the battlefield of rational discourse.

Yet nothing in human experience is as irrational as experience itself. The crises we endure, the people we meet, the wisdom we earn have little to do with theories or beliefs. Our modes of commitment, love, caution, and sacrifice are a lot less about philosophy and a lot more about what we ourselves, "all of us here alive this day," have seen, felt, and done.

For this reason, Judaism is primarily about collective experience, and any attempt to describe it solely in terms of faith, belief, or ideas inevitably distorts its essence. Not that Judaism has no core principles, but to the faithful Jew, each such principle owes its force not so much to its self-evident truth or its philosophical superiority (nor even its revelation per se, since who among us has experienced revelation?) as to its place in our collective memory.

And so, we have our strangely repetitive text. A philosophical truth need be expressed only once. A memory must be repeated—not just from generation to generation, but from day to day, "as you sit in your house, as your go on your way, as you lie down and as you rise up."